Metalunderground.com is over 8 years old and I still have a list of to-dos a mile long. Often, it's hard to focus on one thing because other demands (site and real life) lead me to shift my focus. So I want to ask you all, our readers, what you think we can do better both content-wise and site features/improvements so perhaps I can get a new perspective on my priorities here and refocus on them. Thanks in advance for reading and your feedback.

I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it sounds like a great deterrent to control spam and drive-by posters, but on the other, it deters those who like to stalk and read from posting something when they may have a valid question to post as a new thread. This could lead to derailing threads because the poster has no other choice. And stalkers make up the vast majority of users/readers over the vocal minority.

I don't think it should be a problem as long as the number of posts required isn't extremely high. Spammers who want to post a thread and leave may be deterred just by the fact that they have to put in a bit of time and effort elsewhere in the forum. I think it's a great idea, personally. Just leave the number low, like say.. 5?

But what's stopping them from dropping their spam in a reply instead of a new thread? I'll keep it in mind, but I have a couple things to take care of before that still... like highlighting new messages.

would it be possible to keep everyones past avatar present for the comments they made while using that avatar. that would be pretty cool to go back and see how others have expressed themselves through the conversations.

Not really. Avatars are implemented via Gravatar.com, a third party service. So when you update, it updates everywhere. Which is usually the desired effect for the user. (but I realize sometimes it may not be).

Agreed with db on these issues, it's not too hard to ignore or delete spammy/stupid threads and we don't want to discourage posting and promote off topic but valid questions. Also if a troll like this "Diamond Oz" character can post a thread anyone should be able to :P

Also prefer that avatars are kept current for past posts, helps avoid confusion. Not needing to be a member to post on a news item is one of the things that makes MU great.

There you go. Thanks for the explanation. I didn't think about that, but the forum stores the poster's email address separately from the main user table... so you can see old avatars here. But it's something I might be able to fix too.

As far as private messages go, if users provided an e-mail address in their profile or something, you could just send them an e-mail. But I imagine a lot of people probably aren't willing to make theirs public.